


such wondrous things

by sisinala



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo snatcher of snitches, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Gen, Harry Potter AU, Hater of Ballpens, Hogwarts AU, Muggle!Rey, Other, Pureblood!Ben, auror!rey, chekov's telescope, death eater!Kylo, how to use a keyboard 101, hufflepuff prefect rey, prefect privileges to be taken advantage of in the future, scrolls should be left in the middle ages, slytherin head boy Ben, what is wi-fi?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:24:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisinala/pseuds/sisinala
Summary: Muggleborn kids still get a bad rep, but atleast they have the internet. And pens. And notebooks. Rey educates Ben Solo of the wonders of the modern world, and maybe he can teach her some things in return.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Kylo Ren
Comments: 18
Kudos: 78





	1. gravitation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nadvaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadvaa/gifts), [shadesofstubbornness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofstubbornness/gifts).



> So I stumbled into this beauty:  
> 
> 
> and told myself, hey why not add to your wips? And then I got enabled so here ya go :D Characters are from SW only, since I thought the cast would be too big otherwise. I hope I don't mess up the layout of Hogwarts and sully too many classrooms in the future ;)

It was a good night to look at the sky, the clouds were but wisps on the horizon, the castle's lights were dimmed to simmering torch lights in the hallways, and the moon was in hiding. The notebook she brought with her was full with scribbles, and she tried to keep her writing neat, but she had been too giddy that she's sure she would have to decode her own doodles to transcribe them to her laptop tomorrow. She had to remember to hang out in the courtyards again, under her favorite shady tree, with her solar charger stretched out and bathing in the sun because decades after the industrial revolution, Hogwarts _still_ hasn't installed any plugs on the walls. It had been hell to find cell signal here, more so internet connection until Professor Holdo allowed her to put up the antenna she tweaked with lots of booster spells on the roof over the astronomy tower. 

Rey hovered her hands over the spherical looking glass, nudging it to and fro with gentle pushes of magic, her wand tucked on the garter of her pajama bottoms. 

Finn had found her in the corners of a shady street embezzling people with 'antique' trash she pushed a bit of magic into: a music box that changed songs each time you play it, 'automatic' ladles, and tea kettles that heated up on their own— she spun each one its own tale of woe. He asked her where he learned wandless magic and where she went to school. She answered that she'd always been able to do weird stuff if she just _believed_ enough. And there were schools you can learn magic at? He told her he'd come back for her, and she believed he would. So he did. 

At the same time, she found an envelope she knows she didn’t put in her pocket. 

_Ms. R. Johnson_

_Beside the lamp post just outside Brookwood railway station, Brookwood, SURREY_

After that, an old man with too much swagger and an unfortunately too charming cloaked figure came for her and took her off the streets and took her to Hogwarts. She'd known no other place to call home. That said, she should return the shovels she borrowed from Chewie as soon as possible. She was done with the antenna and it was mostly working. Now, if only she could get it to connect—

“It’s after curfew, Johnson.” 

The voice echoes in the quiet of the room below, his feet quiet but heavily bearing on the metal staircase. She smiles but does not turn around, her hands still on the sphere and her eyes jumping from the notebook on her lap and the calculations on her laptop. The strange, tingling feeling that always, _always_ comes with him--stronger as he draws near--flutters at the back of her neck. Their magics greet each other like old friends, flickering around the edges. She could only compare it to touching a live wire, but without most of the biting pain, just a quick shock that goes _everywhere_. A shiver runs up her back, as if he was running his fingers up her spine.

“Good evening to you too, Solo.”

“That’s fifteen points from Hufflepuff.” He stops at the top of the stairs, careful of the mess of wires she left on the floor. Rey ignores him, forehead scrunching at the looking glass. She was using the stars of Canis Major as her reference, but everytime she tries to set the star trackers on them, the image just blurs. Groaning, she turns her head and looks at him. 

He was still wearing his robes, the end of his wand illuminating him with a flickering red light. It made her dizzy to look at it, but it gave his cheekbones and chin so much definition that she just chose to stare--trying to hide the way she looks him up and down by narrowing her eyes and grimacing. The contrast of the darkness and the light of his wand made him look dangerous, and he looks exactly the same way he did in her dreams. She tilts her head and smiles at him.

“I have a pass from Holdo. You can go back to prowling the halls.” She turns away but then adds hastily, “Don’t touch my stuff.”

There was no sound of him leaving. 

“That’s strange, coming from the one who took my grandfather’s wand.”

“Did you forget that it chose me? That it came to _me_ and not to you? We’ve had this argument a million times, _Kylo Ren_. Go away. You’re distracting me.” She huffs and returns to her work, missing the way the corner of his mouth twitch as he flinched at the barb. 

Ever since she came here, Solo had been hard to get rid of. It probably wasn’t his fault, because he expressed the same level of annoyed revulsion as her every time they meet. But in the five long years she’d been in Hogwarts, after she skipped two years so they were in the same classes, they were assigned to almost every class together. She didn’t know how many points they’ve docked from their respective houses just by screaming at each other in the hallways and trying to make new jinxes to bypass the rule book. In short, it’d been hell. 

The bond blazed. Suddenly there was a breath on her neck and a warmth behind her. 

“You have to compensate for the gyroscopes.” She jumps. When did he—

“I _did._ ” He was leaning over her, trying to take in the mess of her makeshift workspace. She dragged one of the tables and a chair because when she levitated her laptop, it just wobbled. She could feel him trying to mentally rearrange her things into neat piles, his fingers twitching to offer her some semblance of order. 

“Yes, one is broken. But the other two are not really in perfect working order.” He looks at the screen of her laptop. “They rotate slower than that.” 

“Since when do you know about how to angle telescopes? Astronomy lessons only goes as far as star mapping. Does Kylo Ren do a bit of advanced astronomy in his spare time? Doesn’t seem like you.” Lifting a hand from the looking glass, she reviews her numbers and tries to mentally calculate to adjust for the apparently rusty gyroscopes. It was very frustrating the first time she looked through the astronomy tower’s telescope. Even Holdo’s office had a better one than this huge lumbering hunk of metal. But its lenses were big and it only needed a bit of modern nudging and lots of spellcasting to be workable and maybe, just _maybe_ she’d get enough marks for Arithmancy that Holdo would let her skip classes and focus on her work. 

His eyes don’t leave the screen, unmoving. 

“Your equations are wrong.” Her jaw twitches and she narrows her eyes. 

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Alright. Have fun with your two missing factors.” He turns to leave, and she was going to let him go because he was simply _unbearable_ . But at the last second, her hand caught the back of his robes and he stopped walking. On one hand, he was the one who stole the Snitch just under her nose after she spent a whole three minutes chasing it in her first ever Quidditch game and got her banned from the library for three days after she jinxed his hand to stick to one of the bookshelves--in her defense, she was having a bad week and he teased her for climbing the shelves and not just using magic to get the book she needed and that it had been _so muggle_ of her. On the other, he saved her Draught of Living Death from exploding by glancing at her sopophorous beans and motioning for her to crush them instead of cutting. And just last week he saved her from detention as she sneaked into the hallways for stronger signal to send an important query email for her project. She wasn’t scheduled for rounds, and she was a prefect but he was Head Boy of Slytherin and he could’ve docked points, but he just cocked his head and mouthed, _‘you owe me’_ before passing her and disappearing. Swallowing down her pride and biting her lip, she asks, 

“What did I miss?”

“I don’t know, Johnson, what do you think?” 

“Solo, I swear I will jinx you where you stand.”

“Oh now I'm curious. What will you do to me, Rey?” The way he looked at her burned, his dark eyes twinkling in the dim light of the stars. She felt like she was peering on a looking glass, drowning in the calm of the night. Her breath hitches as his gaze flits all over her face, stealing glances of her cheeks, her chin, her lips. He was breathing heavily and he was _very_ close. Her hands clench on her pajama pants and her pen, chest heaving and heart skipping. His lips look so _soft_. 

_I want to kiss you._

Which was idiotic, considering he hates her guts and she hates his, and they have a long history of trying to one-up each other they don't even remember where it started. Probably the time they were the only ones who knew about asphodel roots and she got called to answer first and she noticed his stupid face and his stupid hair. She pushes him away with her hand over his entire face, which made it worse because now she knew the feeling of his lips just above her wrist. 

“I'll dangle you by your pinkies on the telescope. Don't test me. Tell me. Now." He chuckles and it makes her feel dark, dark things inside her that should be forbidden, contemplated under a cold shower. It was easier to hate him when he was far away and not confusing her with his presence. 

"Holdo let you transfigure the lenses to mirrors? Am I looking at the dimensions over here?" He puts his too large finger on the screen and she's always known that he had big hands but up close—

"Rey?"

"Uh, yeah. Mhm." He scratches his chin and she follows the movement like a baby unicorn with sugar cubes. 

"The lenses were already charmed, so you have to account for that. They interact with your spells that's why the curvatures of the mirror are different than than your calculations." 

He nods to himself, and Rey factors in his suggestion. As her hands move over the touch-pad and the keyboard, he looks curious and bewildered. 

"How did you do that?"

"Do what?" 

"All of... that. Did the spellwork take you a long time? That machine looks… efficient." 

"It's a laptop."

"Laptop." Which tells her that he had no idea what it meant. 

"It does almost everything. Should. Since this is a hand-me-down hand-me-down hand-me-down. It lags a lot and--" She trails off, but he seemed interested so she continued, "But it serves me well enough. I have my notes here and I can access most libraries bigger than ours. Shame I can't bring it to class, though." The walls of the castle were hard on the signal, and she wrote notes faster than she typed anyway. 

"Why don't you just use calculation spells?"

"It does faster computation than any of the spells I've tried. And you can play pinball on it." He nods. 

"This looks good." He waved his hand in an awkward circular motion over the screen. 

"Yeah it was freeware I downloaded a while back. I just tinkered with the code and—" She absolutely lost him by the third word. Solo blinked at her sheepishly, nodding to pretend he understood any of what she'd been saying. He looked adorable. Fancy that.

"I'll leave you to your work, then." The corners of his mouth twitched upward, the way it did when she did something exceptional in front of him that he didn't want to acknowledge. It surprised her to see it up close that she doesn't move until he walks away. 

"Wait, Solo! What's the other thing?" Turning around with a smug look, one that almost looked like he was smirking. 

“I’m not telling you anything.” He—He’s _unbearable_. Her words, in the Forbidden Forest, where she found the wand he searched for his whole life. 

The gauntlet has been thrown once more. 

Who was she to resist? 

_“We’ll see.”_


	2. dicotyledon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello it's me again! Back with more paragraphs instead of smut because they just. wont. stop. talking. 
> 
> Thank you <3 ! Happy New Year!!

“When are you going to talk to me?” Rey leaned in close to place her face where he ducked down to avoid looking at her. They’ve been here for half an hour, paired to each other--if the activity was randomly assigned, they would always get each other because the galaxy was just like _that_ \--in Herbology class trimming the Venomous Tentaculas they’ve raised since the beginning of the term. But now the leaves are overgrown and they needed pruning. 

“Pass the shears.” And because she was petty, she snatched them from the table and stuck it on the belt of her skirt. His gloved fingers twitched, but he put his hand down, shook his head and sighed. A lock of hair fell over his eyes, and he tried to shake it away but it fell back beautifully on his sweaty forehead. His hands were gloved and full of soil, and it was evident that he ached to bat it away. He squinted when it poked his eyes. 

_“Diffindo”_ He muttered the Severing Spell multiple times, frustrated at its lack of efficiency. She brought the shears herself, rolling her eyes when she saw that there were a horrendous lack of tools in the greenhouse. Chewie was more than glad to let her borrow his tools most of the time, but when she said that she would use it to taunt Solo, he all but gave it to her with a silk bow and Christmas wrapper. 

“Solo, come on. Please?” 

“I already sent you my notes, Rey. You’re smart. You can figure out the rest on your own.” Was that a compliment? From Solo himself? She waited for the other shoe to drop but he just continued to prune the rest of the sprouts. 

She hounded him for weeks, even sitting next to him in class and shooing his retinue to bug him about her project. Hux and Phasma threw pointed glances and then huffed away when Solo refused to say a word to even defend them. She would be more ashamed of herself if his ears didn’t turn red whenever she came near him. 

If he still doesn’t talk to her today, she’ll sit at Slytherin table tomorrow. 

Last week, when Rey returned to her room, she had been fishing out the apples she snuck into her pockets after lunch when she felt the scroll inside. It was a small thing, but the moment she broke the seal, it unrolled and unrolled until it reached the floor. It was more or less a sixty inch well-researched treatise complete with diagrams he drew himself. The writing was small and tidy, and she had to pull it up to her face and squint at it to tell that it wasn’t typewritten. After reading it three times--the last two just to enjoy the loops of his l’s and the way he crosses his t’s--she stored it in a box in the trunk under her bed. She only took it out unless absolutely necessary. Most of it she memorized, but sometimes she just wanted to look at it again. Thank goodness prefects have their own room, or else her roommate would be suspicious about how much she reads the words out loud to herself. It was probably weird, the amount of times she ran her fingers tenderly over the words. 

Sure, her project had been boosted by his suggestions, but… she wanted his insight, too. She was good at mechanics and math, but he’d been studying charmwork since he could read. True, she could probably do well on her own, but she just knew there was something she was missing--something that he could help her with. It was a strange feeling, but Rey had always went with her feelings. Even when they confused her most of the time. 

“Yes. I’ve looked over them already, I told you that last week. Please, Solo, I really need your help. You’re my only hope.” His hands stop moving, and his eyes lifted up to hers and his jaw worked in that way that she knew he was biting back words. Someone from far away screamed, but it echoed in the back of Rey’s mind because he was looking at her. After weeks, he was finally looking at her. 

Nothing about him has changed, rough around the edges and still painfully handsome, but she noticed that maybe the darkness under his eyes deepened, his skin more flushed at the cheeks. 

_“Rey!”_ An unseen force pushes her back so many steps behind that her side hits the table behind her. She gasps, but the breath she takes in gets lodged in her throat when the Tentacula wraps its barbed tendrils around his neck. It tightens and he gasps as another tendril wraps around his wand hand. He was fighting for breath, red-faced and gasping but his eyes were on her--haunted, so haunted. Rey reaches out with a hand, and in the way that always frightened her, took hold of the Tentacula and forced it to let go. The plant screeched and lashed out, but the invisible force balled it and tangled its tendrils as it screeched. She squeezed her hand into a fist and-- 

“Rey” A voice like a soft, sweet whisper in her ear. Her hand flinches away, and she puts her hand down. She expected him to be afraid, everyone was always afraid--when she shatters glass whenever she was mad, or when the roomed turned cold when she was afraid, when even the headmaster shamed her when she accidentally set Plutt’s shop on fire--she was ready to set her chin high to defend herself with some arrogant retort about how she saved him, but when she looked up all she could find in him was _awe_ , like she was something _beautiful_. 

“Miss Johnson!” Professor Kanata’s voice pierces through the quiet, and she breaks her gaze from him because he was setting a small fire somewhere deep in her chest. Something that threatens to consume. “Mr. Solo, wand always at the ready!” She waves her wand, muttering a spell they couldn’t hear and the Tentacula’s resistance seeped out of it. It folded its leaves and appeared like it was almost asleep. Ben was leaning on the table with his hands, his face contorted in pain. He was still looking at her. There were red stripes on the pale skin of his neck where the tendrils touched, and she went around the table--thankful that she did because at the next moment his knees failed. He tried to take some of his weight and Rey looped one of his huge arms around her shoulders. She’d been hauling car parts since she was eight but he was still the size of a Whomping Willow and gracious was he heavy. 

Professor Kanata looked around the room where the other Tentaculas were now responding to its brother’s screech, and her classmates were now steps away from their workbenches with their wands out. Knowing that she was needed more in the greenhouse, the professor shook her head waved her hand once over Ben--this time without muttering any spell at all, probably something that slowed the venom--and,

“Take him to the infirmary immediately, Ms. Johnson. I’m afraid his life depends on it. Hurry!” She shooed them away, and Rey began the arduous task of carrying Ben Solo through not less than three hallways. He was much taller than her, and twice as wide so there was no way he could lean on her and carry himself at the same time. They dragged each other most of the time, and his cheek was getting hotter as they walked. 

“Hold on, Solo. You can’t die yet. I’ve already got a ten year plan to ruin your life slowly and more painfully than this,” she said through gritted teeth. 

“Just-- Ten years?” She knew that he was a hopscotch skip away from passing out, but he still didn’t let go of the chance to annoy her with a quip. 

“I’m working on it.”

“I have suggestions--” 

“I suggest you shut up before I let go, knock you out and drag you by your ankles.” Blessedly, they turn and find the door to the Hospital Wing where Madam Kalonia immediately rushed to usher them to a hospital bed. Rey unwounds his arm around her, but Solo holds on to her hand, where his fingers dwarf her wrists. Without thought, her hand closes around his. His eyes were closed now, and his lips were parted as he gasped for breath. Madam Kalonia’s eyes fly over Solo as she does a diagnostic spell, flitting over where their hands were joined and then zeroing on the red welts on his neck.

“Miss Johnson, if you and Mr. Solo are having another one of your lover’s quarrels, I suggest not doing it in Herbology class where--” 

“I-- What?” 

“--there is a chance that one of you may suffer an attack from a venomous plant. Next time, I'll tell your mother, Mr. Solo.” She retrieves some potions from the side of the bed, soaks a piece of cloth and dabs it on Solo’s neck. She lets the cloth rest there when she was done. She sighs and then shakes her head. “He’ll be fine. You can stay here until your next class.” She laughs softly, “Try not to set the Quidditch stands on fire. There're still scorch marks from Han and Leia.”

“W-We’re not--” Madam Kalonia raises her eyebrows and then disappears, leaving Rey with her mouth open. Weakly, she sits on the chair that she could conveniently hook her foot around one of the legs and drag to where she was. _What the hell?_

He still hasn’t let go. Neither has she. 

“Please stay.” He hasn’t woken, so he must be dreaming. Whatever he was dreaming about broke his voice in several painful places that reminded Rey of the times she begged the skies for someone, _anyone_ to come back. She runs her thumb over his knuckles to calm him, wondering if she should stay. She should go, give him time to rest. Solo wouldn’t want her to stay anyway, since he was clear about his dislike of her entire existence. Carefully, she removes his hold on her hand, now lax since he’d fallen asleep, and rests his arm on his stomach. He looked so much younger when he was sleeping, without that line of disdain on his forehead. 

She swept the sweaty lock of hair she’d been thinking about away from his eyebrows, smiling to herself. 

“ _Please_.” 

Rey sighed, and plopped back on the chair. He didn’t know she was here anyway. She watches over him as long as she can, and then leaves just as he was waking.

…

The next few days were spent sidestepping him in the hallways, sitting as far away as possible, even going as far as sitting where Finn--who didn’t like sitting in Slytherin table--sat next to Poe. Kaydel, who saw them all together, sat across them, after dragging another Ravenclaw that Rey didn’t recognize with her. At her other side, Rose was more than happy to talk about her project. Paige, who followed her from Hufflepuff to Gryffindor table to sit next to her sister, chimed in from time to time. She enjoyed talking to them, since their parents were muggles, and they understand her woes about being away from the outside world. But she still felt like something was off. She ignored it, since all her life she had never felt safe enough to be comfortable. Not even in Hogwarts. 

She checked out books in the library, but she didn’t stay there. Instead she holed up in her room, the Astronomy Tower, or just random corners of the Hufflepuff common room and mostly avoided everyone. She wouldn’t say she was hitting dead ends, but she was finding it harder to concentrate on her work. Her spells wouldn't stick, her computer froze more than ever, one of her cords burst in flames and she had to wait until next weekend because ebay didn't ship directly to Hogwarts and she had to transfer the order to somewhere that did, and she tried her hardest not to think of _him._ When she felt that there was too much on her mind, she stuffed her face and then went to sleep. One of the best blessings of being in Hogwarts was the seemingly endless supply of food. 

Rey rolled the sherbet lemon in her mouth, nudging at it with her tongue and biting it until she felt it crack. 

Students were forbidden to eat in the library, but without candies she'd shred all her nails from biting them and she was really trying to get rid of that habit. The book in her hand, _Arithmancy of Celestial Bodies by Y. Oda, with Annotations from H. Granger,_ was the only available copy in the library and she wasn't allowed to bring it out, so she took pictures with her phone in case she needed the reference later. Rolling her pen aimlessly on the tabletop, her cheek on the open book, Rey thought that maybe she should just head out. The library was closing in an hour, anyway, and she hasn't eaten dinner yet. Or her usual pre-dinner snack. She was hungry but she didn’t want to move. 

Rey closed her eyes and snuck her hand into her pocket to reach for another sweet. 

"I'll make you a deal, Johnson." 

She didn't open her eyes, instead she waved her hands in a shooing motion and hoped that he would just go away. He probably had other things to do, like terrorizing the first years and docking points just for breathing in his general direction, annoying the professors with his rude intelligence and toeing the line just enough with his pointed questions that they couldn't send him to detention but still come out of class irritated, or just stomping down the halls with that look on his face like he wanted to crush someone under his shiny black leather shoes, and then kiss his soles after. Or maybe strangle baby thestrals and--

"Johnson." He was standing just behind her, and she could feel his tension rolling off their bond like an itch she didn't know where to scratch. Rolling her eyes, she retrieved the sweet from her pocket, unwrapped it and popped it in her mouth as haughtily as she could. The bond did something that brought the taste of peachtree fizzing tea in her tongue.

"What is it, Solo? It’s just candy. Just dock the points then go your merry way. I'll make it up in Herbology tomorrow. The halls miss your looming presence. The trees are getting too healthy without your dark, choking aura. The ghosts need your help scaring the children from snogging behind the statues. Hell, the ghosts are probably afraid of--"

"I'll help you with your project--"

"I don't need your help."

"--if you help me with something with that laptop of yours." Rey lifted her legs over to turn around the bench and face him, cocking her head to the side and crossing her arms. He looked at her, but she can tell that he was avoiding her eyes and was alternating between her forehead and just below her cheeks. She raised her eyebrows and lifted her chin, and his eyes followed the line of her jaw.

"I need your help. My mother-- She wants to set up a profile on the Facebook. Can you-- Can you do that?" Rey blinked rapidly, confused, surprised, and feeling like she wants to laugh at his face but his magic was turning sharp at the sides at his embarrassment and she didn't want to push him away. So she breathed in deep and then swallowed a joke. Maybe five. 

"Why does she need Facebook? Do you have muggle relatives that she needs to talk to? Reception sucks at most magical communities so I don't think it would be of any help to her."

"She needs it for her campaign. Forty percent of magical folk have muggles as immediate family and she wants to let them know that she's accessible--" The whole speech sounded like something rehearsed, like he was reading a formal letter, or a generated message. Rey didn't know much about pureblood families, more so whoever the Solos were. It was all a tangled mess of the subtle aristocracy of the wizarding world that she didn't like to get involved in. But she knew that Solo was probably some sort of bigshot if everything he does gets ignored by most of the teachers and most of the student population love to hate him. He walks around with a protection spell because he probably pissed off enough people that they would willingly go to detention just to get back at him. Once, someone even cursed his cauldron to overheat. It didn't do much though, since the entire week they were quality checking the potions they brewed for the whole month. But Solo got burns in his hand bad enough that he had them bandaged for days. 

"Will you be available for the entire duration of the project?"

"If it doesn't hamper any of my studies, then yes. I would willingly allow myself to be pestered. But only after classes, Johnson."

"No complaining?"

"Mild complaining. And a minimum of three jinxes and one hex per week. But I will _warn_ you beforehand."

"Fine. But it goes both ways." 

It wasn't that hard to decide since she knows what a sweet deal she's getting. It's unfair to him, actually. But she'd never been one to not take advantage of the clueless. The Sorting Hat even offered to put her in Slytherin instead. But she won it over by--

An incessant beeping screeched from her pocket, and she had to dig the tiny egg keychain from where it was buried under mounds of sherbet lemons and crumpled wrappers. The colorful paint around the face of it was a bit faded, and there were notable scratches on the sides of it, but aside from that, her tamagotchi was still holding up pretty well. 

"What is that?" It may be a testament to the amount of time she spent studying him, but Rey knew how to tell that he wants to ask, that the questions were making the bond surround her as he tried to get the slightest clue what she had in her hands. There was that thing that he does with his lips, and then she was patting the seat beside her and showing him the tiny screen. 

"This is my baby, Porgy. It’s a porg." 

He took stock of the pudgy bird-ish creature that was buried in poop sprites. She rushed to clear them with rapid button pressing and finally her 8-bit pet bird emerged. 

" _Porgy_?" She nodded, more to herself. He made the word sound like it was a shame upon his ancestors, a stain on his dainty heirloom porcelain teacups. 

"Hey, I was _twelve_." 

"Yes and when I was twelve I named my dragon _'K'uur',_ Rey. You were doing wandless magic since before that, do you call your wand _‘wandy’_?" She… She does. She shoved the tamagotchi in her pocket. 

“‘K’uur’? Mando’a? Really, Solo?” If it was anything other than he thought it was cool when he read it from the recommended etymology book back in first year that nobody ever reads then she’d give up internet for three days. She asked Kaydel about it once but at that time she was more interested in war histories and political uprisings to talk to Rey about how a language so old can change so little. A thousand questions bubbled unwittingly. What does he think of the Mandalorians doing away with past and future tenses? About how they refused to add new words into their vocabulary, or how a language used most often in war could have its own adoption vow. 

“Isn’t it illegal to keep dragons?”

“Well, yes. But we were at the Hanna Reserve at that time and there was this Hungarian hornback that hid her eggs on the outpost roof at night. She was hatching them there and the fire she used on them burned through the stone. We had to sleep outside but I got to name a dragon.” He shrugged, and then continued, “It’s the-- She was the smallest one of them. She was the last to come out and she didn’t move and they thought she was dead.” He swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing. 

“So you called her _‘the silence’_? Because she wasn’t breathing?”

“No. Her mind, it’s-- She was calming? Dragons usually have very loud thoughts.” All thoughts of Mando’a fled her. 

“You’re a Legilimens.” It came out as a disbelieving, breathy sigh. Like it was a truth she knew long ago but did not understand until now. The way he avoided crowded places, how he always felt like he was carrying a wall around him all the time, the protection spells. 

“It’s not as useful as you think it is. And no, the professors are all good at Occlumency. I never cheated.”

“I didn’t say anything--”

“--Yet. The question was there” He cocked his head to the side and stared at her mockingly, rolling the vowels on his tongue. She glared at him.

“Get out of my head!” 

“I’m not reading your mind, Johnson. I don’t need to.” And then he leaned towards her, close enough that he was a breath away from her face. There was a slight upturn on the corner of his lips that she saw in the periphery, because right at that moment she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. “You already let me take whatever I want.” 


End file.
